My hype died years ago. Not sure if this series can pull anything out that would get me interested again at this point. Too many mediocre stories.

 

I've recently re-read the series and enjoyed it just like I did the first time. An hours pay worth of reading for the next book is more than fine for me. The wait isn't really shit for me.

 

I've been re-reading the Codex Alera series so I'm fairly hyped for this. I must admit though, I'm not as hyped as I was for the books before his hiatus.

 

Has anyone read the new short story with Goodman Grey?

 

I have. It gives a bit more information on the character, shows more of his convictions, abilities, definitely does *not* answer the ‘Rent,’ comments that he makes.

It also shows Marcone in an additional light, making him slightly more human by showing either a minor lack of understanding of a certain situation, or a slight willingness to compromise on his primary rule.

 

'Monsters', it seems.

 

Anything that brings Marcone down is good in my book. His Batman characterisation irritates me.

 

I hav eno idea where to put this stuff anymore, so... Here we go: https://www.tor.com/2019/12/16/jim-...or-the-20th-anniversary-of-the-dresden-files/

July 14, 2020.

 

Damnit Jim. February not good enough?

 

God...I hadn't realised it was 2014 was the last one. Bets on whether that means fans are super eager, or whether the book fails to take off?

 

I hadn't realised that the series had been running that long...as frustrating as the delay between books might have been recently, 23 books released in 20 years is a pretty impressive achievement, IMO (counting Codex Alera, that steampunk one I can't remember the name of).

 

Aww yeah. It's a damn long time away, but that's closer than "Possibly never" so I'm officially stoked. Now let's see the fanfiction start to pop up once more!

 

I suspect that most will be eager, but I won't be surprised if this is going to be the most criticised book in the series, no matter how good it is. It's just the expectations after that long wait will be really high compared to the previous ones.

 

I know that for both my dad and I, having this long a wait has been a bit offputting, especially with the previously high release rate. For several of the more recent releases, we'd each pre-order a copy, or he'd get the book during the day, and I'd get it at night.

We're still planning on buying a copy... At some point. But I'd probably want to re-read some of the more recent ones, and that's a bigger time commitment now I'm actually working.

 

This is why @Zeelthor needs to write an "Up to now" summary so we all don't have to read the entire series again.

 

Are you sure you don't mean @LittleChicago?

 

No, he'll just make us wait six years until he posts it.

 

Challenge accepted.

Storm Front.

So... Our story begins in Chicago sometime in the late nineties, I think, though the tone and female characters suggests we're reading a 1950's story about a private detective (which, to be fair, may be the point). Harry Dresden is in his mid-twenties and his tragic backstory includes both parents croaking before he hit puberty, his first magic teacher being an evil dick, his adopted sister and also first girlfriend (which is kinda weird and why Molly/Dresden is the OTP, but I'm getting ahead of myself) possibly betraying him, then probably dying, before the sudden appearance of the White Council of wizards who give Harry a suspended death sentence, and gives him off to another wizard named McCoy. (Scotty was on vacation.)

Back to Chicago. Dresden is hired by a woman to find her husband who has gone missing. At the same time, an escort and an enforcer get their hearts exploded mid-coitus. Insert pun about explosive sex here - I'm pretty sure the book already does. Harry's "friend" at the police, Karrin Murphy, wants him to investigate what went on, since people's hearts generally don't explode. (This was before Monster energy drink was invented.) On the way from the crime scene, Dresden meets up with Marcone, who tells him to not investigate it. It's a tense conversation and the slashfic writers are sharpening their pencils.

The escort works for a vampire madame called Bianca and Dresden meets with her and makes her cry. What a lad. He also makes her go into a bloodfrenzy in which she kills her favourite human pet, but I'm sure that won't come back to bite him later.

Dresden sets off to investigate the husband, since looking into Murphy's case would essentially mean making yourself a nuke and then trying to explain to the cops that you were only trying to figure out how it was done without actually setting the bomb off - scout's honour. He still does meet a wizard named Morgan, who is a warden, a wizarding cop. Morgan is a right cunt. I love the guy. He's sure Dresden killed the mob dude.

There's some back and forth past this point, leading to the climax where Dresen fights a monster scorpion, gets arrested by Murphy, evades arrest, hits Morgan with a chair and goes off to kill the evil wizard who's been doing the heart-exploding because he also turns out to be the missing husband.

Fool Moon.

This book isn't very good, but there's werewolves in it, which is pretty cool. Murphy calls Dresden in again to look at a few people who have died around the full moon. Turns out others have died the previous month. The latest victim's are Marcone's people, which is bad. The FBI are now in town to investigate, and they're trigger-happy, which is worse.

Dresden looks into a few local werewolves, because there's four different kinds in this book, and it leads to a threeway conflict between the FBI agents on a rampage against the criminal underworld, a businessman and demon-werewolf, and Marcone who wants to buy some of the dude's land.

Murphy arrests Harry again - take a shot - and Dresden meets the Alphas, college-students and shapeshifters. The book ends with Murphy shooting some of the cops and Dresden kills the demonwolf.

Oh, and Susan is around. She's in the first book, too, but I forgot and I can't be bothered to edit. Susan's okay, but doesn't affect the story a lot. She does give Harry a few coat, though.

Grave Peril

This is where the series begins to get pretty good, but isn't quite all the way there yet, and as such I don't really remember a lot of the intricate parts.

Dresden and his pal Michael, who is the fist of God, are doing ghostbusting. They've been doing this a lot lately, because the ghosts of Chicago are going bonkers. Dresden is contacted by a young woman who says she's haunted by some big ghost. Dresden tries to help her. There's also worries the veil between the real world and the spirit world (The Nevernever) is thinning, which is bad.

There's also a vampire masquerade ball coming up and the vampires are not happy with Dresden because of previous encounters and also because they're evil. There's also issues with Harry's faerie godmother being present and wanting him to pay up on that deal they struck 10 years or so ago.

Even with Thomas the sex vampire present, the party goes to shit when Susan sneaks in. Since she's not invited properly, she isn't protected by rules of hospitality. The vampires take Susan. So Harry burns the entire place to the ground and kills most of them. A measured and reasonable response, honestly. Unfortunately, some of the vampires get away and Susan is still with them. So Harry and Michael set off to save her, dodge Harry's faerie
godmother once more, and then Harry ends up trapped in their basement. Woops.

The vampires want Susan, who they've now infected with their thirst, to eat him and become one of them. Thereby giving them some plausible deniability. This backfires because she doesn't, and Harry gets out, and kills the shit out of Bianca.

Susan survives and doesn't become a vampire - not fully, anyways. She ditches Harry and heads off to South America. Harry killing a vampire noble starts a war between wizard and vampires. Susan gets a bad rap in this book, but honestly, I don't mind her that much.

Summer Knight

This is where the series gets good. Is it because quality writing? I mean, partially. Mostly, it's because of Mab. What do you need to know about Mab? She's awesome. That is all. There's a story, too, but it's not as important as Mab.

The book starts with Harry in a shitty situation after Susan left, trying to obsessively fix her vampire-ness. To make things more fun, the White Council coming to town to discuss Dresden starting that war in the previous book. They've just recently been Pearl Harbored by the vampires and are going to decide if Harry dies to make the vampires stop being dicks, or if he lives. To decide, he's given a task to fix. If he fixes it, he lives. If not, well...

The task is the one given him earlier by the Queen of the Winter Fae, Mab. He's to solve the murder of the hitman of her opposite end, The Summer Queen, and exonorate her. This takes Harry all over Chicago and into the Nevernever, interacting with the other Fae. He also meets his old adopted sister/ex girlfriend (Iiiiiiiick) who it turns out isn't dead, but has been hanging out with the Summer Fae for a while, and is now working against him on the case.

In the end, it turns out the younger Queen of Summer (There's three. Of each court) decided to embrace the mantra of most game developers and fuck the balance. In this case, of the world, because she was tired of the conflict between Winter and Summer. Dresden is offered to take the mantle of the winter knight (because the other guy turned out to be colluding with the Summer Fae), but he turns her down.


Okay. @LittleChicago I'm tagging you in here. Save me. I was going to write a short succinct summary of each and it span out of control. SEND HELP!

 

Holt shit you mad beautiful bastard.